


Silence

by Glinda



Category: Doctor Who (Comics), Doctor Who - Various Authors
Genre: Angst, F/F, Time War, crossing timestreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-11
Updated: 2009-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-07 14:23:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She lets her in, makes her tea, and finds some gin to lace it with, without a word.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silence

She's met Iris several times over the years, in several different incarnations and one thing she never is, is quiet. Brash, vivacious, obnoxious, joyous, affectionate, just plain loud, could all have been used to describe Iris in the past. Yet the woman sitting hunched at Izzy's kitchen table, muted and lost is definitely Iris. She almost hadn't recognised the older woman, so different had she seemed standing on her doorstep. Below the faded platinum hair and haunted eyes, she hears the truth of the words – in her dreams for weeks before Gallifrey has burned. She lets her in, makes her tea, and finds some gin to lace it with, without a word.

_(There was a war. Daleks. Everybody lost.)_

It's the silence that gets to you, Iris tells her. The absence of the constant buzz of awareness, in the back of her head, that marked the presence of the rest of her species. That, she insists, is why the renegades are always so loud, shouting at the universe, trying to drown out the sound of the people they can never escape. No matter how far they travel, how fast they run. Calling them home.

She can feel the turn of the earth beneath her feet and she watches the patterns the time lines make as they twist, flowing and changing, forming the future in front of her eyes. She cannot however, tell where the Doctor is, other than that he is alive. That she has no doubt about. There is steel behind the sadness in Iris' eyes when she states this, and Izzy wisely does not press her on why she's so sure. She does not ask about Fey's fate; Iris does not tell.

She knows why Iris is here, because Izzy has seen Gallifrey, she remembers. More than that though, Izzy knows full well the need to run from everything you know, the way normal life can suffocate you, the desperate need for excitement and adventure; and the need for a home to return to. Iris has run for nearly as long as the Doctor, little as either of them desired to go home, now the choice is no longer there.

Iris' hair is bound up in an untidy bun, so Izzy takes it down for her and brushes the yards of it out thoroughly. Highlights are long in Izzy's past, but image has always been so central to who Iris is; faced with this tangle-haired, all but silent stranger, she can think of no better way to begin. She rattles on to her muted companion, about her hairdresser flatmate and his continuing unsuccessful attempts to get her to do 'interesting' things to her hair. Threatens to let him loose on Iris's hair, trying desperately to activate Iris's latent vanity. Every ghost of smile feels like a bitter victory.

The night grows late and they cease to mix the gin with tea. Ignoring the edge of hysteria to their laughter as they share their own tall tales of adventures among the stars and here on earth. Pushing back the silence as best they can. Eventually they fall into bed, and it is here that Izzy begins to recognise her. Her eyes lose their lost dull look, and suddenly though briefly she feels alive beneath Izzy's fingers and full of that fierce passion that she associates with Iris. She does her best to ignore the words Iris whispers against her skin, places and people, some she recognises some she doesn't; a litany of the dead. Unable to quite shift the notion that the taste on Iris' lips is death rather than merely dead cigarettes, drowning out the hint of thunderstorms.

She wakes in the morning to an empty bed, and a note in bright pink lipstick on the pillow. She smiles at the note and puts it carefully in the box with her old love letters, anchored by a key on a chain she no longer wears.


End file.
